This page features some poetry and thoughts from our collective of poets & writers. Please check out our event page under the link section to keep up to date on what we are up to as well! Disclaimer: Some blogs contain adult language and themes.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

2002 Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City, UT, Late January.

here is another (mostly) true story. the names were kept the same to incriminate the guilty:

They look like mythological creatures,

Stout faces burned by time and the sun,

Their eyes shine like a trash-filled cauldron

Burning at the end of an expansive snow laden lot,

They have the mouths of a carp,

Slowly aspirating in rhythm to the inflation and

Deflation of their corpulent bellies,

Which are contained by faded plaid shirts

Stained with BBQ sauce and whiskey

From misplaced sips from the bottle,

They emit an ungodly odor

Vaguely reminiscent of urine and bile,

Their matted hair hangs down from their foreheads,

They bounce on the train

Like hooded figures swaying in tandem the Southern breeze,

Suddenly one grumbles, a surprise on my part,

As he move as though a stone figure has become animated,

“Gimme your shoes, honky!” says the drunk Indian,

We are alone on a the train that’s headed toward downtown,

Just we three and the two drunken Indians of mythological lore,

The comment is directed at Drew and his gray Chuck Taylors,

“Gimme your shoes, honky!”

I know that to fight these drunken Indians would be a losing battle,

Not only do they have tree trunk arms

And pissed-off expressions that twitch in a fumy cloud of Jim Beam,

But, we are all beginning to feel the effects

Of Psilocybin invading our collective conscious,

Only minutes earlier I was telling my buddy Paul:

“These shrooms are making me gassy, man,

I think I’m gonna puke that Margherita pizza from earlier!”

I was saying this clenching my belly

While Paul looked at his fingers, which had become

Flaccid as wet noodles and were swirling as though in a sea before him,

“Gimme your shoe, honky!”

This time the drunken Indian attempts to stand

When he says it, but he sways like statue unlocked from its base,

He tries to right himself but his grain-soaked brain

Still thinks that he is sitting down,

Suddenly the train comes to a halt and the Indian topples over,

The doors swing open and we dismount the train

Leaving the two Mythological creatures to rot in their mobile tomb,

The world outside is just as hellish

As the one we’ve just departed,

There is something weirdly chthonic

Implicit in the environment outside,

Hoards of empty-eyed pedestrians stumble about

Like the walking dead with their mouths agape,

Office buildings tower overhead

Like the ominous tombstones of fallen gods,

A once verdant and overgrown park

Is now littered with skeletal trees and ashen snow,

And, at the heart of it all, at the Galvin Center,

Lies the Budweiser Beer Gardens,

In which the multitudes shift in and out,

Mindlessly filling their plastic red cups with a sort of golden death,

At the entrance to the beer gardens are monolithic columns,

Celestial spires or ziggurats

With corporate sponsorship that read: King of Beers,

It is like the gates of heaven, only instead of St. Michael

There is a DJ spinning the most unbearable house music,

He is like some long forgotten general from the Third Reich

Reanimated so that he can once again bring havoc upon mankind,

Who wears a headset whence he is seemingly

Receiving telephonic messages from Satan himself,

And, the most horrifying part is that the crowd just loves him,

Or, maybe they are hypnotized by the pulsating drumbeats,

Will these lemmings follow their leader to the precipice? I wonder,

But, Paul wakes me from my reverie

Handing me an Anchor Steam

That he has just wrestled from my backpack,

The beer will calm me down, I think,

Perhaps, retard these fleeting notions,

I look up to see the group has proceeded to march on,

Check this shit out, Paul says, motioning toward

A giant picture of a figure skater draped over a skyscraper,

The city has draped many similar enormous

Photographs over the buildings downtown,

From a distance the appear still,

But, standing underneath them now

I realize that a bit of air separates them from the building,

And, a breeze dances just below it causing the

Ice skater’s figure to wave and ripple,

Suddenly a notion dawns on me: the closer you get to

Any still object, the more you realize that everything

Is in constant chaotic motion,

This shit is really tripped out, says Drew,

And, I feel no words better articulate what I am feeling,

We trudge on, going through Anchor Steams like

An Escalade goes through unleaded fuel,

We roll joints laced with Opium,

And, blow clouds of billowing smoke into a crowd of missionaries,

We are lawless, we are vigilante, and we are stoned as a mutha,

We get locked into port-o-potties, and ogle beautiful women,

We offend young children with our crass tongues,

And make little girls cry with only our grimaces and pig-snort laughter,

We have fire burning in our eyes, and make demon-possessed expressions,

We talk endlessly, our subject matters cover the

Width and breadth of human knowledge:

Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ontology, Genetics,

And, with each passing word the world becomes

Even more harrowing and less familiar,

Suddenly, Paul and I are staring through a window at

A lithograph of an old couple, titled: The Lithographer and her Husband.

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Who We Are

Spoken Views was created by Iain "Emic" Watson & Tony "Talik" Walker in late 2006. The vision was to create & support an alternative scene of spoken word poets, freestylers, writers, artists & musicians in effort to bring awareness & diversity to Reno's forever growing cultural community. After promoting several spoken word events at Se7en & Beach Hut Deli, the need for these events soon grew. Spoken Views responded by hosting monthly poetry and music nights @ various locations. Poets and writers range in age, skill, and background & audiences are always diverse and supportive. These nights have grown into one of Reno’s most dynamic and consistent poetry events and was voted best poetry open mic 2010 in the Reno News and Review.

Spoken Views has formed a growing collective of about 13 poets who perform at various venues and events both as solo artists and together as a team.